With the advent of automated teller machine transactions, preauthorized payments, telephone bill payments, and other ways of transferring funds from a checking account without using a check, means are needed for conveniently and accurately keeping a record of these "non-check" transactions, as well as to produce and dispose of the required printed materials. It has been a simple matter to keep a convenient and accurate record of these non-check transactions in a checkbook system in which a separate transaction register is employed, where there is, in effect, no limit on space for recording deposits and withdrawals. For checkbook systems which rely on the use of an individual check stub for each check, however, there has been no convenient and accurate way of indicating withdrawals from the checking account made by means other than a check, such as those listed above. Because many people carry out a number of non-check transactions between the writing of each check, it can be inconvenient and confusing for them to try crowd a record of several non-check transactions into or between spaces on a small check stub.
Another result of new banking methods has been the proliferation of paraphernalia relating to a person's checking account in addition to checks and deposit slips, such as plastic credit card-type transaction cards and computer printed automated teller machine receipts. It would be welcome as convenient and safe to all persons who use these items to have all their checking account paraphernalia conveniently and safely in one place.
For many years, negotiable instrument "safety paper" with its characteristic background designs, has been produced by means of a flexographic dry process or a wet web process used during the manufacturing of the paper. In these processes, the manufacturer has no control over the finished sheeted pattern, and hence cannot selectively place information without overprinting a finished piece of "safety paper", nor can he drop out the "safety paper" design where it is not necessary. Accordingly, stubs as well as checks have carried the "safety paper" background, and any information on the checks or stubs has been placed there by overprinting the finished sheet of "safety paper". In the stub the background may serve only to obscure entries and the printing of it requires the use of more ink than would be necessary if the "safety paper" design could be dropped out where it is unnecessary.
It is also important to produce materials of this character as inexpensively as possible, consistent with a good quality product. Considering the vast number of checks, check stubs and other blank negotiable instrument forms that are manufactured in any given year, savings in ink and other costs of production that are, from the viewpoint of a single printed sheet, of an almost trivial nature, become, when summed over one year's production, a major saving for manufacturer and consumer alike.